Re Query:
Hi Greg. It looks like anyone holding gold stocks right now has just
become a long term investor unless they want to take severe losses. I
just an article by Steven Kelman in Investors Digest where he predicts
gold to hit $700 U.S. by the year 2000. The $11m that YRI has is that in cash or is it all/some invested to yield better returns than in the money markets?
I'm hearing that the INDO gvmt won't be handing out the COW's till 1998, and that the senior companies there most noteabley ABX want nothing to do with INDO at the present. What is your take on this matter?
Thanks
Comments:
I believe that the gold price will recover by mid-1998, but that is a personal view and doesn't reflect any particular corporate expectation or strategy on the part of Yamana. This comes from several conversations with others in the business, various 'gold bugs' and investment advisors. At the same time -- and as I've said before -- noone I'm aware of has been able to predict long-term gold prices with any reliability.
Yamana's "cash" is held in R1-rated (highest) Canadian Commercial paper. You'll see the interest income earned on that reported on our quarterlies. For the six months ended August 31, 1997, that was US$407,194, compared with US$434,189 for the same period a year earlier.
Indo rumors do proliferate, don't they? The Mines Department told us at a meeting two weeks ago -- repeating what they have been saying for a couple of months -- that 7th Generation COWs will be signed in November or December. I give this a high probability of being true, but not an absolute certainty.
As to your last question, here's what I sent in response to a related question today:
"I do not forsee any scenerio in which Barrick will withdraw its support for Yamana in Indonesia in the near or medium term. We have become a sort of exploration arm for them, working on the ground which they wanted when it became available in January 1996, but which we were able to procure. (We didn't know at the time they were eyeing the same ground, but we were first in line because of our contacts in the Mines Department and our energies spent planning for the opening of new COW applcations at that time.) There are always unpredictible factors, of course, but we expect to have Barrick beside and behind us for a long time.
Meanwhile, we are geting good results out of Indonesia and we have identified four drill targets so far. Once the COWs are signed, and we hope this will be in calendar 1997, we will be planning to start the drill program in the following several months."
Cheers
Greg |
